It may possibly aid the solution of our problem if it be shown that New England had quite as much to do with the establishment of African slavery on this continent as had the South, though it survived longest in the latter section; that slavery at the North was, while it continued, as rigorous a system as ever it was at the South; that abolition was at the North in the main deemed as illegal, and its advocates encountered as much obloquy there as at the South; that the emancipation of the slaves was effected not by the Northern people at large, but by a limited band of enthusiasts and in the wise providence of God; that the emancipation proclamation was not based on the lofty moral principle of universal freedom, to which it has been the custom to accredit it, but was a war-measure, resorted to only on “necessity of war,” and as a means of restoring the Union. Further, that the investment of the Negro with the elective franchise was not the result of a high moral sentiment founded on the rights of man, but was effected in a spirit of heat if not of revenge, and under a misapprehension of the true bearing of such an act; that the Negro has not used the power vested in him for the advantage of himself or of anyone else, but in a reckless, unreasonable, and dangerous way; that while there have been cases of injustice to him, in the main the restraints thrown around him at the South have been merely such as were rendered necessary to preserve the South from absolute and irretrievable ruin; that the same instincts under which the South has acted prevail at the North; that the Negro has been and is being educated by the South to an extent far beyond his right to claim, or the ability of the white race to contribute to it; that he is as yet incapable, as a race, of self-government. And finally, that unless the white race continues to assert itself and retains control, a large section of the nation will become hopelessly Africanized, and American civilization relapse and possibly perish. Slavery was until within, historically speaking, a very recent period, as much a Northern institution as it was a Southern one; it existed in full vigor in all of the original thirteen colonies, and while it existed it was quite as rigorous a system at the North as at the South. Every law which formed its code at the South had its counterpart in the North, and with less reason; for while there were at the South not less than 600,000 slaves—Virginia having, by the census of 1790, 293,427—there were at the North, by the census of 1790, less than 42,000. Regulations not wholly compatible with absolute freedom of will are necessary concomitants of any system of slavery, especially where the slaves are in large numbers; and it should move the hearts of our brethren at the North to greater patience with us that they, too, are not “without sin.”